The news last month that two adult Austrian women had accused their father of keeping them in a rape dungeon for their entire lives—coupled with a remarkably similar 2008 story—prompted us to ask: What's the story with all the horrendous family-rape, Austria? Turns out the latest story isn't quite what it seemed.

In April 2008, an Austrian woman named Elisabeth Fritzl revealed to police that her father, Josef,…
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The victims now say that it wasn't their father who trapped them in a rape dungeon for the last 41 years. It was...some other guy. Easy enough mistake to make, right?

The two women still say they were sexually molested but now say that another man — not their father — was responsible and that the alleged assaults happened sometime in the past, the state prosecutor's office said.

A statement from the prosecutor's office in the Upper Austrian city of Ried said that version is now being checked and the original suspect has been released, without specifying when he was set free.

Now 53 and 45 years old, the two women have been described by officials as having mental disabilities — one to a slight degree, the other more severely affected.

Of course, mentally disabled women who've been raped repeatedly for decades by their father may be susceptible to pressure to recant their stories after coming forward. Or maybe they made an honest mistake. Weird though.